The Technology Pork Barrel by Linda R. Cohen, Roger G. Noll

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TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 465 interest. This obsession has meant that an invitation from the State Department to one of its prospective advisers had to be accompanied by a twenty-page, single-spaced legal memorandum outlining finan­ cial disclosure requirements (not surprisingly, he declined the post). For a time at least, the State Department was even forbidden to reimburse its science advisers for travel expenses. On the other hand, science advisers picked by one president who become holdovers in a succeeding administration are viewed, sometimes rightly, as ideological rivals and even prospective saboteurs and are rou­ tinely shut out of the government’s business if they cannot be fired outright. This was the case, for example, with scientists originally hired by the Environmental Protection Agency during the Carter administra­ tion who became summary victims of the Reagan revolution. As a solution to reforming what has been called the “fifth branch” of the government, Smith does not call for any move as radical as repeal of the sunshine laws—whose intent ofopening up the government remains noble and even necessary. Instead, he calls for a commonsense rather than a stricdy legalistic interpretation of language in the sunshine laws that mandates things like “fair balance” in the makeup of advisory groups. Amendment of the sunshine laws to define such vague terms, and to simplify bureaucratic procedures that threaten to bury advisers and the advisory process itself in paperwork, is his preferred remedy. Perhaps the greateststep in assuringthatsound scientificadvice reaches the government, and also in restoringthe status ofscience advisers, Smith suggests, is a humble acknowledgment by both science and government that few, if any, complex political problems have a technical fix and, likewise, that even “wizards” sometimes have their own agenda. Gregg Herken Dr. Herken is chairman of the Department of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum and author of Cardinal Choices: Presidential Science Advisingfrom the Atomic Bomb to SDI (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). The Technology Pork Barrel. By Linda R. Cohen and Roger G. Noll. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1991. Pp. xiii + 400; ta­ bles, notes, index. $36.95 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). A major topic of recent debate in the political arena has been the competitiveness of U.S. technology in the world’s economy, especially faced with the challenges from Germany and Japan. While govern­ ment support for research and development of nondefense-related technologies declined during the 1980s in the latter countries, in The Technology Pork Barrel, Linda Cohen and Roger Noll point out it declined even faster in the United States. Cohen and Noll present six case studies to illustrate how political and economic factors influence the performance of commercial R&D 466 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE programs and the extent to which these influences may be predictable and controllable. They point out that each of the six programs was de­ signed to deliver a commercially useful technology to private users. They were each supported initially by the government because of the perception that the long-term economic benefits to society would ex­ ceed the costs but the costs were too great for private industry to assume alone. For various reasons, each ran into political difficulties that led to réévaluation and even cancellation. The book’s title is related to the authors’ view that, as a projectbecomes better defined, it becomes more politically salient to members of Congress who wish to support their home constituencies. “Once the pork barrel phase begins, technical news will have to be very bad indeed to overcome the political inertia that prolongs a program for distributive reasons” (pp. 72—73). The supersonic transport and the Clinch River breeder reactor were never built. Each was troubled by rising costs, technical com­ plexity, and increasing environmental concerns that made them vulnerable. Cohen and Noll also point out that both were difficult to justify because cost-effective usage of each could not be guaranteed, which led the industries they were supposed to support, aircraft and nuclear power, to avoid investing heavily in them. This forced supporters to change their focus and rationale in vain attempts to keep them alive. Cohen and Noll are particularly bothered by the argument that...